If you’ve been anywhere near the University of Denver lately, you’ve probably seen Dennis James at work in what he calls his “office in the sky.” James operates the tower crane at One Observatory Park, an eleven-story, mixed-use development going up on the SE corner of University and Evans.
“I’m the materials handler,” he says. “You tell me what you got, how much it weighs, and where it’s going, and I’ll get the load there in a timely manner.”
Every morning at 6:00 he climbs the 130 ft. ladder to his “office,” which measures a scant 5' by 7' but which affords him an unobstructed view of the Front Range from Pikes Peak to the Flatirons. He can climb it in ten minutes, he says, but he prefers to take his time, stopping at each of the tower’s nine platforms to inspect it for overall condition. Twelve hours later he climbs down, a descent he can do in six minutes if he has to.
A construction worker since high school, James got his first shot at working a tower crane in Steamboat Springs in 1996. “A company called TCD hired me to help build Torian Plum, this condo project up there,” he says. “They asked if I could operate a tower crane. I went up there, got in the seat and aced it.” It was, for Dennis James, a moment of pure bliss. “This was where I wanted to be,” he says, “high above all the testosterone crap that goes on down below on a job site. I never looked back.”
For all his enthusiasm, James is no tower crane cowboy. He’s methodical, painstaking, and careful to a fault. He has to be. Operating a tower crane is, bottom line, an extremely risky profession. “If something goes catastrophically wrong,” he says, “you don’t go to the clinic, you go to the morgue.” He's had his share of close calls.
There was, for example, the time he exerted some extra line pull to free a form that had frozen around some poured concrete. It jerked loose and the crane started rocking 8 to 10 ft, forwards and backwards. “It took five minutes for that bad boy to settle down,” he says. “All I could do was hang on. Cranes have gone over. Operators have been killed.”
Old Glory waves over his cab not only because James is a patriot, but also because it tells him and his crew which way the wind is blowing, and how fast. “Winds are the critical thing,” he says. “You can see a storm coming from the mountains like a row of linebackers. The last thing you wanna do is climb out. I weigh 220 and have had my feet blown out vertically while trying to climb down. You get hit with a storm and it’s like being in a ship. The thing’s rocking and rolling. You come off it punch drunk.”
He’s meticulous about keeping his tiny cab neat and clean. There’s a stack of National Gs and a couple of books on a shelf over his right shoulder which he studies during down times. In case you’re wondering, a Clorox bottle serves as defacto urinal. He sends it down on a rope when it’s full.
Tower crane operators earn between $25 and $70 an hour, plus a pantload of overtime. “Top guys can make up to $120,000 a year,” he says. “For me, though, it’s not all about the money. It’s a passion, building buildings and walking away safe. I also like mentoring the younger guys. Most operators are quiet. Not me. I demand respect, safety, and steadiness.”
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- Don Morreale is taking a break to teach a course in speech writing in Hangzhou, China. He'll be back in May with more stories about interesting Denver personalities. Stay tuned.
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